Sure, he may live in a country that banned all modern technology, including TV and the Internet, from 1996 to 2001. But Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, now relies on his iPhone for all the same reasons its other users are hooked.
The former ambassador, who spent nearly four years imprisoned in Guantanamo, is now back in Afghanistan and uses his iPhone for things like online banking and finding directions on his phone’s built-in GPS. He reportedly calls the device “necessary” in today’s world.
Meanwhile, the wife of eponymous Microsoft mogul Bill Gates remains cruelly iPhone-deprived. Melinda Gates recently admitted to Vogue that she and her Microsoft-founding husband have a household policy against Apple products. But this sacrifice doesn’t come without its costs: As she watches her friends using their Jobs-ian gadgets, she sometimes thinks, “Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone.”
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Image: Flickr / ten safe frogs
March 4th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I had a blackberry for 4 years and just bought an iphone. It’s way better!!!
Yesterday I downloaded my first game, JigSee, which lets you take a picture from the iphone camera and then turns it into a jig saw puzzle, and the kids love it!!!
March 4th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
[...] on iMac’s standard wired keyboard (0) March 3, 2009 — Apple adds dual-band capabilities Today in iPhones: The Taliban Can Have Them, Melinda Gates Can’t – blogs.discovermagazine.com 03/04/2009 [ iphone3.jpg]Sure, he may live in a country that banned [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
The Taliban did not ban “modern technology,” they were not luddites. TV and internet was banned because they didn’t have the infrastructure to regulate the content.
Stop spreading propaganda.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:28 am
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